


A Bit of Lace

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love in a laundromat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-05-15 05:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5773543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Gold's dryer breaks down and he's forced to finish his laundry at the Wash n Suds where he encounters Belle French.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gold stood in his laundry room with hands on his hips and glaring at his dryer which had stubbornly refused to tumble. He had tried resetting it, turning it off and on again, and beating it about the body casing with his cane but the only thing that happened was a good-sized dent on the front and a broken cane.

There was nothing else to do then. He scooped out the load of wet towels and dumped them back into the laundry basket.

He could take them to the cleaners where he had his suits and shirts done, but he never liked having strangers touch his things so did his regular washing at his house. It would be difficult to intimidate and coerce if a person knew what his boxers looked like, he reasoned and, besides, he found the process of folding laundry soothing when he needed to unwind after a hard day of... intimidating and coercing.

The wet things weighed the basket down and even if his cane wasn’t snapped in half, he wouldn’t have been able to carry it without toppling over. He couldn’t carry it, but he could drag it after him to the hallway, bent over like a baboon and making a mental note to visit his chiropractor when he was done.

The laundromat was just as bleak and dingy as he’d expected, but, as he scanned the inside for an available dryer, his eyes caught sight of a particular brunette that had been plaguing his thoughts for months. It was just a glimpse before she’d ducked behind the row of washers to attend to a dryer in the back, but he knew it was her. No one else in town had hair the color of ripe chestnuts with hints of red when the sun caught it just right.

Belle French. Belle Beautiful French. Belle Beautiful Librarian French. Belle Beautiful Librarian _Unattainable_ French. She had come into Storybrooke like a whirlwind five months ago, opening up the library for the first time in years and breathing life to the old building and the dusty town. His shop was just across the street from the library and some days during his lunch breaks — or in between his endless rounds of intimidating and coercing — he would stroll inside, casual-like, and browse the stacks. Sometimes he would even check out a book just for the chance to speak to her even if it was a short and sweet, “thank you” after she’d handed it to him, a bright and mysterious smile hovering on her lips.

Belle’s apartment was provided through the city so he’d never had to deal with her in a landlord-y capacity, which greatly limited his opportunities for actual human interaction. _Talking_ to her was out of the question. His tongue dried right up in his mouth whenever he got closer than a five feet radius. His knees got jelly-like and his heart raced dangerously close to panic attack levels while his palms grew sweaty and his fingers _itched_ to see if her cheek was as soft and downy as it looked.

He fucking _liked_ her damn it.

He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this second round of puberty, but he couldn’t blame Belle Fan-fucking-tastic French for it, she was faultless for his... unseemly infatuation. She had always been polite and friendly, but had never attempted to socialize with him and he assumed, by now, she had learned enough of his reputation to keep her well away from him outside of her capacities as a librarian. Which was fine. He was fine. He didn’t need companionship per se, but, if he did sometimes think about it on lonely nights spent in his overly large house where there was no one to talk to, then he thought Belle Wonderful French might be just the person with whom he could spend time.

The door swung back, hitting him on the back and he stumbled in just as she stood up again, her blue eyes unerringly finding him just at the moment when he let out an unbecoming noise of surprise at being hit.

He flushed as she smiled at him, her kind eyes crinkling up at the corners adorably and if he wasn’t already pulling an obviously full laundry basket then he would have turned right around and walked back out to hide until he could put his humiliation to rest. Which would be never in point of fact.

A quick glance around told him that the dryers were in the back where Belle was and there were a dozen reasons for him to turn around and bully someone into finishing his laundry for him no matter what his feelings were about people touching his boxers, but he found himself putting one foot in front of the other, drawn to her presence despite himself. It was a slow and degrading walk, his limp emphasized dramatically with his cane and the basket and he averted his eyes from her as he turned past the row of washers and saw that every single dryer had been taken.

He’d have to wait.

With her.

His eyes flicked up to her and saw that she busy folding a stack of fluffy looking towels — wasn’t even paying attention to him, which was both good and bad. Good in that he escaped her notice but bad because, well, he escaped her notice. Did he not even register as a blip on her radar? Most people were so frightened of him that they kept an eye on him at all times lest they expose their backs to him (preposterous as he’d hardly ever attacked anyone), but Belle Fuck You French had arbitrarily concluded that he was harmless.

He blinked rapidly, letting his hair hang forward a bit to hide his face as he set the basket down on the floor with a quiet, “oof.”

She looked at him then, a soft upward tilt to her lips as he was bent over and if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that she just glanced at his ass, but that couldn’t have been right because his ass was… well, it was his _ass_. It was nothing great to look at. At least, he assumed so never having spent any length of time examining it in a mirror. Perhaps he would do so when he got back to the house and see if it was enticing enough for Belle Kill Me Now French to look at.

Or, maybe she just happened to glance over and her eyes just happened to fall into the vicinity of his backside and that’s all there was to it.

There were a couple of chairs provided for laundromat customers and one had a heavy book placed on it leaving the other open. “Her Handsome Hero” was scrawled on the cover in thin, loopy letters and he smiled a bit at this insight into Belle French’s reading material. It looked like a romance, but it didn’t have a shirtless pirate on the cover. Maybe it was supposed to be ironic.

“Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Gold,” she said and it took him a moment to realize that she was actually speaking to him and he glanced up in surprise.

“Miss French,” he said, unable to say anything more clever than that.

“You’re not gonna wash your clothes first?” she asked, lifting a questioning eyebrow at him.

“No! I mean, I-I already had. The, uh, my dryer. Stopped working.”

She made a sympathetic noise, nodding her head as she shook a towel out before quickly folding it into fourths. “And, of course, you don’t find out until after you’ve already done a load of laundry. How annoying. And all these are taken right now,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, staring at her in fascination. It seemed to him that she was being a bit sloppy with the folding, not lining up the edges of her washcloths and slapping them haphazardly on the folding table and he could only presume that being in his presence was such a hardship that she was desperate to leave.

She must have noticed that he had been staring at her because she gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I was at a good spot in my book and I’m eager to get back to it. I’m not normally this bad at it I promise.”

“I don’t see why my opinion matters,” he said and he marveled at the fact that he managed an entire sentence without stuttering and then marveled again when she giggled, shaking her head at him helplessly. It was a miracle — he made her laugh.

The folding table was situated so that he had a lovely view of her profile and it was either look up at her or down at his feet so he did what came naturally and contemplated the shine on his shoes.

The silence grew uncomfortably and he glanced at her book on the chair next to him then up at Belle again, blurting out before he could stop himself, “Do you want me to read to you?”

She lowered her arms and turned her head, staring at him open-mouthed before she recovered with a becoming flush. “I— _Really_? Yes, that would be very good of you, Mr. Gold.” She turned back to her towels, her blush deepening and spreading low across her chest. “You can start at the second paragraph on the left side.”

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Well, there was nothing for him to do now but follow through and he picked up the book and opened it up at the bookmarked page, admiring the dainty filigreed paper cutout that she used to mark her place before examining the text. His eyes widened as he realized the title didn’t lie and that he was actually about to read an erotic passage to Belle Fucking French in a public laundromat where anyone might hear him.

Fuuuuuck!

A glance up at her showed that she was patiently waiting for him to begin, biting her bottom lip in anticipation. He didn’t want to disappoint her so he cleared his throat and began, softly at first lest the manager overheard him reading smut to the librarian — enacting a fantasy he never even knew he’d _had_ until now — but, as he got further into the chapter, his confidence grew, letting his voice caress the words as he spoke breathing life into the story in his attempt to entertain Belle The Actual Cause of his Death French.

He turned the page with a finger, taking the opportunity to glance up at her and stuttered to a halt when he saw that she had slowed her folding down to a snail’s pace, her breathing having grown heavy as if she couldn’t catch her breath and the flush seemed to be a permanent state of being now. Perhaps he was not very good at this he realized with dismay and he thought that maybe he should stop when she turned to look at him with glazed over eyes waiting for him to continue.

“Uh, the dryer stopped,” he said, pointing at it  and she came to herself then as if a switch had been flipped and she laughed shakily.

“Right!” she said, brittlely. “Right. I’ll, uh, just get that and you can put your stuff in…”

He averted his eyes as she crouched down to hastily dump her clothes out into a waiting basket, then, when she scooted back to the table, he moved his own wet laundry in, paying the exorbitant amount of money for the minimum amount of time and then there was nothing left to do but wait, so he sat back down and picked up where he left off.

His clothes had been done for fifteen minutes, but he had been so absorbed in reading to her while she folded three more loads of clothes that he didn’t realize that she was done until she cleared her throat at him.

He looked up, startled at her interruption then realized that her laundry was put away in neat stacks inside a deep laundry basket and she was ready to go.

“You’re a wonderful reader, Mr. Gold,” she told, her voice unaccountably throaty and that flush still visible beneath her coat.

Words had left him once again now that he wasn’t reading them off a page and he just shrugged self-deprecatingly.

She took a deep breath, her lips pressed together in a thin line before she huffed out a breathy, “Maybe... maybe I’ll see you around?”

He nodded at her, knowing that if there was any time to ask her out on a date this would be the best opportunity he would ever get, but as he opened his mouth to say something his mind went blank and he could only squeak out a meager, “Yeah.”

Her smile dimmed and she cleared her throat once more, nodding toward the book in his hands. “Well, then…”

“Oh! Oh, yes, of-of course,” he stammered, handing it to her and he was proud at the way his hands did not shake in front of her. She took it from him and put it on top of what looked like folded pajamas and his eyes nearly crossed trying to make out the design on the flannel when he realized she was saying goodbye.

She was out the door before he recovered enough to give his own farewell, staring as she loaded up her basket into her car and driving off.

He’d screwed up. He didn’t know _how_ , he just knew that he _did_.  

His own laundry done, he absentmindedly scooped it out then, as he was about to get down to the business of folding, Leroy walked in disturbing the silence of the laundromat with his raucous chatter, so he gathered up his things and left.

He would enjoy it more if he was alone anyway.

Home was more peaceful than the laundromat of course, but it also lacked a certain Belle Gone in Sixty Seconds French, too and he contemplated what he could have done differently that afternoon. Other than actually interacting with a woman he admired.

There was nothing he could have done. Maybe, if he was someone else he could have conversed with her, but it was impossible. She just did something to him that broke his synapses until he was a gibbering, drooling fool at her feet. Reading to her while she folded laundry was actually the most communication he’d ever had with her and he wondered, if he showed up at the same time next week, would he be able to do it again.

The temptation to leave his dryer as it was was great, but he couldn’t bring himself to see Belle Give Him a Heart Attack French again so he called a repairman and threatened him until he agreed to come out the next day to fix it. There was no problem with his speech now, he thought bitterly as he hung up, wiping a hand down his face in exhaustion.

Folding laundry would settled his nerves a bit and he dumped the clothes onto his couch and got started with the soothing, mindless task before him. He was still contemplating the exact shade of blue of Belle French’s eyes and how they deepened when she was happy when his fingers picked up something that didn’t feel like it belonged to him.

He looked down and gasped, lifting his hands up to his eyes, his jaw dropping in disbelief as he held a pair of the tiniest panties he had ever seen.

These were definitely not his. _He_ did not own lacy thongs that looked as if they barely contained _anything_. His brain slowed down and then sped up when he realized exactly who these belonged to and the image of Belle Kill Me Now French scooping her laundry out of the dryer flit through his mind in a haze. They belonged to her. They belonged to her and she’d forgotten them in her haste and now they were in his possession and how the fuck was he supposed to return them to her? There was no real etiquette for returning panties to an acquaintance without deep humiliation to either party.

His thumb ran across the delicate lace, relishing the rough feel of it as he imagined them on Belle Thong French and the way it might sit on her hips, snug and low, and how the thong would fit tight in the cleft of her ass leaving those glorious cheeks free from constraint, and the triangle of lace in the front barely covering the glorious thatch of hair that covered her pussy.

Or maybe she waxed?

Laundry left forgotten on the couch, he staggered to his office to pour himself a fingerful of scotch with a shaking hand, splashing his desk with the alcohol as the image of her bending over in one of her flirty skirts and exposing her sweet backside to him made the breath catch in his throat.

He poured the drink down his gullet, but even the burn of it couldn’t dispel the fact that he had such an intimate part of Belle Fuck Me French in his meaty paw.

He could mail them to her, he thought, considering them. But she would still know who had them because who else would have the opportunity to have them?

He couldn’t just return them with one of his library books in the night drop off. That would be rude and unsanitary. Nor could he just cavalierly walk up to her and explain the mix up to her in a rational manner because his brain simply closed up shop whenever he was near her.

He held them up again, marveling at how tiny they were, then held them up against his hips to see how she might fit there. Remarkably scrawny himself, but he dwarfed the panties even as he stretched the sides to their widest point. His thumb slipped and lost his grip on them as they snapped, flying off to the corner in back of the potted ficus and he scrambled after them like a monkey after peanut, scooping them up safe and sound in his hand once more. He shoved them in his pocket for safekeeping then flopped down in his office chair, ready to pour himself another scotch.  

He would just have to keep them.


	2. A Bit of Brogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle's interpretation of what happened was completely different.

_“You taste of starlight and honeysuckle,” Rummold murmured against Lacey’s quivering flesh, his tongue darting out to dip into the pool of wetness. She arched into him as he delved, exploring her folds with noisy enthusiasm until she cried out — in pleasure or pain she could not tell only that it overwhelmed her senses until there was only Rummold and the magnificent things he was doing with his mouth —_

The sound of a buzzer ripped Belle out of the story she was reading just as she got to the part where the Unresolved Sexual Tension was no longer Unresolved and heavily settled down in the Resolved category where it belonged. She was left feeling deliciously uncomfortable and only the thought of being able to leave as soon as possible so she could indulge in some private time made her drag herself out of the hard plastic chair to tend to her laundry.

Her towels were wonderfully warm and soft from the dryer and the scent of her fabric softener helped bring her out of her story and into the real world a bit. She tended to lose focus as she emerged from her books and oftentimes it took someone nearly shouting in her ear to get her to snap out of her book-coma.

She glanced up at the sound of the door opening and saw Mr. Gold standing in the doorway with his laundry. He looked so completely of place in the dingy laundromat — who in their right mind wore a fine wool suit to do their laundry anyway? Mr. Gold, that’s who. He was eyeing the establishment as if scouting out for hidden enemies and she supposed he probably was. The man was notorious for being closed off to anyone and everybody and she’d heard the most outrageous rumors about him ever since she moved to Storybrooke. They said he evicted motherless babies out into the cold. That he would stick a knife in you as soon as look at you and that he drank the blood from a crystal goblet while you lay dying in the street.

It was all a load of rot and, after a week of hearing the tales grow in scope and plain bizarreness, she nearly turned right back around to Boston and her meaningless, part-time job rather than be stuck in a town with a bunch of gullible idiots, but she stayed, stubbornly determined to lift up the ignorant from the pit of superstition even if she had to drag them to the light by their ears.

Some of the things she heard about the elusive Mr. Gold might have had some kernel of truth to them and it was those tiny tidbits that intrigued her. He ran the pawnshop, for instance, and yet, she knew of no one that actually pawned or bought anything there. In fact, except for a man who simply went by the surely made up name “Dove”, she’d never seen anyone enter or leave the building except Mr. Gold himself. He owned nearly all the real estate in the town, and that was the truth, but, even though she was told about his exacting nature, she never heard that the rent was exorbitant nor that his buildings were in disrepair. Indeed, it was a strange phenomenon in this quaint little town, that the residents were bitter and angry at having to pay rent at all. Did they expect to live in their homes for free?

There were other whispers, too. About money lending outside the scope of the business of a pawnshop and _that_ she might believe. He was certainly very wealthy even given the standards in this small blue-collared town and that meant shady dealings. Probably. The man certainly kept to himself, but he walked as if he owned the world, striding about the town with absolute confidence and poise even with the gold-topped cane he used — the limp didn’t slow him down any and the practiced way he walked with it, as if he’d lived with his injury for so long now that he never even noticed it, only added to that air of mysteriousness about him. She wondered how he got the limp. Was it from a car accident? Or was there some other, slightly criminal reason for it? Maybe it was because he had been trying to outrun the police during his youth or he’d been on the receiving end of someone’s ire at some point. She’d once put her morals to the wayside and ran a quick Google search on the man, but she was hampered by not knowing his first name, all his business dealings only listed him as B. Gold. It was yet another mystery to uncover.

His sharp suits helped him stand out amid the faded flannel and denim of the other male inhabitants. The only real anomaly in the total image was his long hair that he let grow past his collar to brush up against his padded shoulders. It was a lovely brown color, shot through with gray and it had a way of falling in his face that made Belle itch to run her fingers through it. His eyes were usually hidden behind a pair of smoky sunglasses, but when he came into the library and took them off, they were the softest brown that she had ever seen. He smiled sometimes when he entered the library, a gentle, sweet thing that just barely lifted up the corners of his lips on one side, but the sight of it made her weak in the knees and she was only too grateful that he aimed it in her direction rarely or else she’d make a fool of herself.

In short, he was dead fucking sexy.

He rarely spoke, but when he did, his deeply accented voice went straight down to areas she tried not to think about during working hours. It was unprofessional, but after he checked out a book with his characteristic, “Thank you,” she always had to excuse herself to the bathroom where she would splash her face with cold water until she felt ready to greet patrons again. A few times never to be spoken of to anyone — ever — when Mr. Gold’s crooked smile emerged underneath a particularly smoldering low-lidded stare and the way the muscles in his throat worked as he spoke those few words to her, she had to run upstairs to do a little more than splash cold water on herself but, even though she was heartily ashamed afterwards for not being able to control herself better, her satisfaction always outweighed the guilt. She was just grateful she lived above her workplace, it made things so convenient when things got desperate. He had to have known what he was doing to her. It was impossible for any man to be that sexy and not use it like a lethal weapon.

And he was here at the laundromat. With her.

She noticed that he struggled a bit with both his laundry basket and cane and she had to strangle the urge to rush to his aid. The man was proud, that was a fact, and probably wouldn’t accept her offer of help even if she could somehow get her legs to work long enough to make the trek to the door. She quickly averted her eyes to save him the embarrassment of her staring, pretending to be absorbed in her task. Her book entirely forgotten, she watched his progress out of the corner of her eyes, waiting to see where he would settle himself and hope that it would be near her and maybe she could work up the nerve to strike up a conversation with him.

To her surprise, he didn’t stop at the row of washing machines, but came straight to the back wit the dryers along the wall and, after some hesitation, sat down with a soft exhalation that made her smile at her laundry. She waited at least three washcloths before she spoke up, the urge to pry overwhelming his apparent need for solitude.

“Aren’t you going to wash them first?” she asked, trying not to laugh. Seriously, who hung out in a laundromat all day?

His bumbling answer was unexpected and charmed her, but it did provide the necessary information and she tried to get him to open up a bit more, but he just clammed up with a blush to his sharp cheeks and looked at his feet as if they contained all the answers in the  universe.

She stared ahead, not really focusing on anything in particular, as she wondered this interesting bit of the puzzle. Could it be that Mr. Gold was… hopelessly shy? That this mysterious and intense man who came across so tough and mighty was three seconds away from a panic attack?

Confused, she mentioned something about her folding technique then kicked herself for saying something so stupid, so completely ordinary and unimpressive that she was absurdly flustered with relief when he replied with a silly quip.  A bubble of giddiness welled up before she could stop it and, to her mortification, she was giggling like a seventeen year-old in front of her English professor and that was when her laughter faded away as she visualized that image fully. Of her standing in front of Mr. Gold’s desk wearing knee socks and a tiny plaid skirt underneath a white shirt unbuttoned scandalously low while he stood up from his seat, his hands unbuckling his leather belt as he growled out instructions to bend over his desk and present herself for a spanking. That did it. She didn’t even know she had that fantasy before. Pressing her knees together, she squeezed her inner muscles as tightly as she could, but it was no use. The emptiness inside her ached and her hands started shaking from trying to suppress the urge to jump onto Mr. Gold’s lap and explain to him, in great detail, exactly what he did to her and how, precisely, she would like to fix it.

“Do you want me to read to you?”

Belle turned her head so fast that her neck was going to have a crick in it for days. “What?” she said, breathlessly and babbled something nonsensical and before she could stop him, he picked up the book and opened it to the place where she’d left off.

Oh God. But she was reading smut! She had been reading smut and she would never be able to look him in the eye now. She waited for him to throw the book down in disgust and storm away. She waited for him to close the book and tease her unmercifully about her choice of reading material and obvious single status. She waited for him to sneer and give her a glimpse of that gold tooth as he cut her down. She waited for his harsh judgement, biting her lip in shame sure that she’d just ruined all her chances to ever get to know him better.

Instead, he read. His voice wavered at first, yes, but he gamely went on, enunciating the words beautifully and breathing life into the story. She gasped as he began, closing her eyes to let the sensual way he spoke flow through her and surround her senses completely. This had been a mistake. A ridiculous, foolish mistake, but nothing short of an explosion would have budged her from her spot.

After a moment, she remembered her task and tried to concentrate on it, but it was nearly impossible to do something so mundane while listening to something so sublime.

Mr. Gold rolled his R’s and, up until that moment, Belle wasn’t aware that she might be able to come without direct physical stimulation. She had already been mildly aroused by the story, but his voice went straight to her clit, bypassing every rational thought and she would have paid good money to have him recite an ode with his lips pressed against her pussy.   _Maybe he would make a deal_ , she thought as his voice deepened an octave at a particularly juicy bit. It would be worth it.

She soaked his voice in, letting it wash over her and her imagination. She wasn’t folding laundry in some dirty laundromat, she was Lacey and Gold was Rummold and they were entwined in each other’s arms doing a dance as old as time itself.

_“Rummold’s harsh gasping in Lacey’s ear drove her wild and she keened along with him, her sharp nails digging grooves into his back as she clung to him. Closer. She needed him closer. She wanted to consume all of him or die in the trying of it…”_

Gold’s voice drifted away and it took Belle some time to realize that he’d stopped reading altogether. What happened? Had she been drooling?

She looked at him, wide-eyed and breathing heavily… Okay she was panting at him, but he only mentioned that the dryer had stopped and she came crashing back down to earth.

Embarrassed at herself, she hurriedly stuffed the warm clothes into a heap in her basket and got to work, mentally berating herself for losing her head like that. She shouldn’t have had him read anything to her. She should have known he would bewitch her with that gorgeous brogue of his. She should have kept their interactions at a minimum lest she started prancing after him like Pepe LePeu after a black cat.

But no, he picked the book again after putting his laundry in and Rummold and Lacey were back at it and Belle’s knees were once again in danger of collapsing.

_“Again, the feeling of bliss surmounted her and wave upon wave of ecstasy shot through her veins. She trembled beneath him, mouthing at his neck as she came and as at last she could feel his release, his thick cock pumping his seed inside her and that brought on another small tremor of joy, that he should choose her over all the others in his harem…”_

Gold paused a moment before continuing.

_“His harem to plant his child in. She was Chosen. She alone was Loved.”_

Belle made sure to keep her wits as he read on and she silently folded every scrap of laundry she had, carefully and slowly placing it in neat piles in her laundry basket then donned her coat. Mr. Gold never looked up, he had become too enraptured with the story to notice her and she took that moment to study him under the harsh lighting.

The fringe around his face hung so that his eyes were hidden, but she could see his mouth and watch as his lips formed those words which nearly drove her wild earlier — the rounding of his vowels, so completely different than her own accent, were especially titillating. It was fascinating to watch him speak and she anticipated that he would be more forthcoming with her now that they had shared this afternoon together. She had many books for him to read if he liked.

A seed of hope planted inside her breast and she gathered her courage before she could talk herself out of it.

He looked up at her when she interrupted him and she nearly apologized for it except that it was her book he was reading and she was tired of waiting for him to notice her.

“You’re a wonderful reader, Mr. Gold,” she said, warmly. _I wouldn’t mind another private reading. In the nude, she thought. We can learn Braille._

He didn’t even answer her, just shrugged as if it was a matter of course that he would read smut to a near stranger in a public place and she stared at him curiously.

“Maybe... maybe I’ll see you around?” she asked, unable to contain her eagerness. This was it. He would either welcome her company or not and she held her breath and her smile while she waited for his answer… which never came. He just nodded at her mutely as if she wasn’t even worth the effort for speech.

Belle felt gutted. This was not how this was supposed to end. He was supposed to charm her off her feet and out of her clothes and then he would speak delicious things into her ear while she fed off of him.

Apparently Mr. Gold wasn’t as affected by their encounter as she had been. Apparently, it barely even registered with him. Apparently, he wasn’t shy, he was uninterested.

Hurt and disappointed and angry at herself for building up her hopes so recklessly, she just asked for her book back, not even taking the time to brush her fingers against his and scurried away, chastised and feeling sorry for ever thinking that the mysterious Mr. Gold could ever see anything worthwhile in a meek, mousy librarian.


	3. The Return

The panties were a problem. He’d had them for a week, tucking into his pockets with the intent of returning them to their rightful owner, but every time he looked toward the library it seemed as if the entire population of Storybrooke had decided to show up. He couldn’t return Belle’s underwear in front of anyone, especially at her place of business. It would be mortifying for both of them.

The only solution he could think of was to mail them, but that was plain ridiculous considering he worked several yards away. It would be cowardly of him and Gold hated for Belle to think he lacked fortitude of any kind. Even if it was true.

He’d have to suck it up.

Then there was a problem of presentation. He could just hand her a wad of lace and walk away of course, but that felt rude to him. He could put it in a box, but then that spoke of gift giving and what kind of gift was a pair of used panties you already owned? A small bag would be appropriate, but, as he never used them in his store, he had trouble finding anything that was suitable. A plastic grocery sack was crude, the colorful gift bags were… well, they were as bad as a gift box.

He’d gone so far as to wrap them in a couple layers of tissue paper, tied with some twine in a nice bow. He’d then taken the bow off as being too much only to replace the twine with some grosgrain ribbon he’d had laying around and which matched the tissue paper nicely. Then he pushed the package away in disgust. Mostly with himself rather than his wrapping job.

Such a fuss over such a tiny thing. He was being ridiculous.

Of course, Belle might not have realized they were missing. Maybe she had dozens just like them. Or, maybe she knew they were missing and, not being an idiot, knew who had them, but decided it was best to let them go and have nothing more to do with him. That was the most likely explanation and he was going to go with that when he caught sight of Belle closing the library for the night and heading towards Granny’s. It seemed like she may have looked in his direction for half a second, but that must have been his imagination.

Still.

He could just catch her if he hurried.

He pocketed the underwear, tissue paper and all, and rushed out of the shop only pausing long enough to lock the door behind him. He’d have to come back to turn all the lights off and maybe bring home some paperwork, but all that could wait until after he’d returned her… item.

She was already seated at a small table — the last one open in the busy diner — her blue eyes scanning over the menu as if it hadn’t been the exactly same for nearly a decade. There was a book placed on the table near her elbow, another book than the one he’d read to her in the laundry mat and he assumed that would be tonight’s reading.

He took a deep breath and gathered his fraying nerves as he worked his way between the tables until he stood before her, clearing his throat to gain her attention.

She looked up at the sound, dropping the menu on the table in surprise when she saw who it was, her mouth open in a soft “oh” of surprise.

“Mr. Gold,” she said, sitting a mite bit straighter in her chair as if he was going to take her to task for slouching.

“Miss French,” he began, very aware that nearly everyone in the diner was staring at them, watching for him to do something atrocious, like raise her rent (despite not owning Belle’s apartment) or… exist. “I, uh, I have something of yours.”

She cocked her head to the side with a puzzled frown. “You do?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead. “What?”

He pulled out the package, the tissue paper barely crumpled in his large hand, and placed it in front of her. “It got mixed up with my laundry,” he said in a low voice. “I, um, haven’t had a chance to return them until now.”

Liar.

She stared at the small bundle in front of her for a second before her eyes widened in realization and she drew in a sharp breath. “Oh! Oh, I see.” A blush began to spread across her cheeks. “I’d wondered where they’d gotten to,” she said, sheepishly.

The unwelcome idea that she thought she may have left them at a lover’s house crossed his mind and his hand tightened on his cane, the metal biting into his fleshy palm painfully. He should have just mailed them to her.

“Um, yes, well,” he began, already preparing the long, humiliating journey of walking away, but before he could finish she interrupted him.

“Would you like to join me?” she asked, her face a mixture of bravery and hope.

It was his turn to gawp at her, his turn to blush — maddeningly, like a school boy and in front of half the town — but he drew out the chair opposite her and carefully sat down, self-conscious and feeling like he was on some sort of trial, but Belle’s kind face and her open expression put him at ease. She wanted his company. Someone thrust a menu in front of his face, which he took without comment.

They stared at each other, each one smiling shyly over their menus, and he, well, there was no hiding it his infatuation. He found to his amazement that he didn’t want to hide it. He didn’t need to read the specials so he set it down to the side, smiling a bit more when she did the same with a small shrug of her shoulders.

He tilted his head, craning to see the title of her book cover. The Enchanted Forest, it read. He glanced up at her, his eyes alight with playfulness. “Would you like me to read to you?”


End file.
